Chapter 461: Five Beacon Towers, Five Cannons

In the Ming dynasty, Gansu was a place both simple and complex — it was not a provincial-level administrative division, nor an independent geographical unit, but a military concept: a garrison town.

This was the strategic stronghold from which the Central Plains dynasties controlled the Western Regions; everything in Hexi revolved around military activity. Ever since Zhang Qian of the Han dynasty blazed a trail into the Western Regions, generation after generation of Central Plains soldiers' descendants had put down roots here — they came by imperial decree for war, and in the end they would die for war.

Yet in the Ming dynasty, the people's most important mission was not war, but propagation — propagation at any cost.

From fifty thousand they propagated to a hundred thousand, from a hundred thousand to two hundred thousand, from two hundred thousand to five hundred thousand, from five hundred thousand to a million.

Fifteen hundred years after the fall of the Western Han Empire, the population of Hexi at last returned to the heights it had known in Zhao Chongguo's military-farming era.

Having endured shattered territory and decimated populations through the Song and Yuan eras, the recovered old lands of Hexi and the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun finally renewed their bond with the Central Plains dynasty in the Ming. The redevelopment of a North China where no human voice was heard for a hundred li, and the opening up of Liaodong, Yunnan-Guizhou, and Hexi, were the Ming dynasty's greatest territorial achievements.

But every gain comes with a loss, and no ruler, however brilliant and far-sighted, could foresee the changes a century later. In the early Ming, Hexi was empty of people; to settle immigrants, in the first year of the Hongwu reign an edict was issued calling for people to farm the land. Each person was given fifteen mu of grain land and two mu of vegetable land, tax-exempt for three years, with no limit on acreage for those with surplus strength.

In a place like Hexi, sparsely populated and where Han and barbarians lived intermingled in the early Ming, opening up land for farming was impossible without the armed pioneering of clans. This created in Gansu a great number of powerful clan-based military landlords whose fortunes rose and fell with the state.

The most far-reaching mutiny of the Ming dynasty, the Ganzhou Mutiny of the Jiajing era, was born of these circumstances.

Before the Ganzhou Mutiny, the harsh northern environment and unrelenting military pressure meant that pay arrears, clamoring for pay, and mutiny were objectively existing problems, but mutiny was merely a way for soldiers to seek a resolution.

Before the Zhengde reign, mutinies did not occur often, and even during the entire Zhengde reign, they happened only three times.

It was not until the Ganzhou Mutiny — the first mutiny led by the Gansu Regional Commander Li Long, who exploited the soldiers' grievances to grind Gansu Grand Coordinator Xu Ming's bones to dust — and the court's mishandling of the affair, that killing grand coordinators and plundering the common people became the standard pattern for later mutinies.

After that, through the Jiajing, Wanli, and Tianqi reigns right up to the present, the number of mutinies skyrocketed, with all types exceeding a hundred incidents.

In the Gansu Regional Command headquarters at Zhangye city, the great general Yang Jiamo sat in the main hall, his back to the Hexi map that covered an entire wall, his brow furrowed, silent for a long time.

At his hand lay an urgent dispatch returned from the front lines; the news of Bai Guang'en's defeat was already known to him.

The Yang family had produced generals in Gansu for generations. In the gobi and barren sands of Gansu, war was fought on intelligence, and so Yang Jiamo, in commanding the troops, had his own rules beyond military law.

Within a radius of one hundred fifty li centered on his field headquarters, whenever any army shifted defenses and reached its destination or encountered the enemy, it had to send word to the Regional Commander's headquarters at the first opportunity — changing horses but not riders — with the message delivered to headquarters within two shichen, and the reply sent back to the front within six shichen.

The reason it was a radius of one hundred fifty li was that the farthest distance from the Qilian Mountains to the Alxa Desert was three hundred li.

One intelligence report after another was sent back: from the front line encountering the enemy, Li Yun's death in defeat, Bai Guang'en's initial victory, to the arrival of the Marshal's Headquarters reinforcements, and finally the rout and retreat. Liu Can's defeated troops were still on the road back to Ganzhou, yet the entire course of the battle was already fully within Yang Jiamo's grasp.

But he had no way to act, because Yang Jiamo had no troops at hand — his own standard battalion was at the Zhuanglang River, and the garrison battalion had also been thrown away by Bai Guang'en.

Gansu had soldiers; Zhangye was the gobi pearl of Hexi, and the five Ganzhou Guards all around were full of soldiers — but Yang Jiamo had no way to mobilize them, because it was spring.

Spring was no time for war, and especially not in this drought year when signs of a Hexi drought were already showing.

Farming tied the hands and feet of Gansu's many garrison-farming military households. Yang Jiamo held the urgent letter from Liu Can, the battalion commander who had lost the battle at the front, pondering Zhang Tianlin's words "next time we meet will be at Liangzhou," and stared long and hard at the Hexi terrain map behind him, somewhat unable to make up his mind.

Yang Jiamo took no action; apart from having no troops, there was another reason, one connected to Gansu's geography.

The narrow, elongated Hexi Corridor, hemmed in by desert and mountains — from west to east: Suzhou-Jiuquan, Gaotai-Camel City, Ganzhou-Zhangye, Shandan Garrison City, Yongchang Garrison City, Liangzhou-Wuwei, Gulang Thousand-Household Station — along this single road, every place was a point strategists had to contest.

Losing any of these cities was serious, but conversely, except for Wuwei and Zhangye, losing any of them was not exactly fatal either.

After all, the desert that had pressed ever closer step by step throughout the Ming dynasty meant that from Jiuquan to Gaotai had gradually lost the ability to be self-sufficient; the only true gobi oases left were Liangzhou-Wuwei and Ganzhou-Zhangye.

These were the two most densely populated places in all of Gansu.

In the empty Regional Commander's yamen, Yang Jiamo was like a man holding a pile of jigsaw pieces, piecing together Liu Chengzong's strategic intent and Zhang Tianlin's tactical objective one by one, and could find no reason for Zhang Tianlin to be lying.

If viewed as a regular army, this rebel force with a total strength of five thousand men, though it had seized government equipment, had only captured the light artillery of Ming army field equipment.

Moreover, their numbers were insufficient. Although the thousand-arrows-flying iron-tube great arrows mentioned in the battle report left a deep impression on Yang Jiamo, they had no supply line; such weapons were used once and lost, and it would be hard for them to gain an advantage in a siege.

All that awaited them was to break up into small groups, mutiny on the spot, and turn to banditry.

But Zhang Tianlin was a peasant army leader, and the peasant army's combat characteristic was to run, loot, and press-gang as they went. Therefore Yang Jiamo judged that at this moment in Gansu, only Zhangye and Wuwei could satisfy his needs.

By looting and press-ganging in the outskirts, they would rapidly swell to twenty or thirty thousand, then lay siege to and attack Zhangye or Wuwei.

And between these two choices, attacking Zhangye held little significance, because Zhangye had a large garrison and would not help the Marshal's Headquarters' overall campaign; indeed, Wuwei city in Liangzhou was the better choice.

Taking Wuwei would allow the Marshal's Headquarters to directly threaten the rear of the Zhuanglang River battlefield.

As for Ganzhou further west — the desertified Gaotai-Camel City or Jiuquan, which was reduced to a small oasis — it was not that Yang Jiamo had not considered them. He had, but he could not fathom the point of running further west.

If they went that way, they could only go beyond the pass. Beyond the pass was truly a place without supplies. North of Jiayu Pass was the Heihe River and desert, south was the Qilian Mountains; that road led straight out of the pass to Turpan.

Looked at this way, Zhang Tianlin seemed to be telling the truth.

Yet precisely because of thirty years of grueling military life, the old general's sharp instinct made Yang Jiamo disbelieve it; in his heart he suspected that the so-called Liangzhou was nothing more than a crude feint to the east while striking west.

What real general would ever reveal his true intent to the enemy?

No one except a brainless peasant army would fight a war like that... yet according to Zhang Tianlin's own self-introduction, this bastard's bandit nickname was "Passing Sky Star," and he really did seem to be peasant army.

Yang Jiamo stared fixedly at the map, putting himself in the enemy's shoes to ponder the Marshal's Headquarters' intent: first throwing a bunch of Mongol Tatars and Duogan Tibetans to block the Zhuanglang River, then hurling a fairly capable peasant army leader and his isolated force across the Qilian Mountains.

The Gansu grand commander wondered to himself: could the Marshal's Headquarters have fallen into internal strife, and Liu Chengzong was using the border troops' hands to purge dissenters?

Of course, this was only a momentary thought; as soon as the possibility surfaced in his mind, Yang Jiamo shook his head at himself.

If Liu Chengzong did not hold absolute power in the Marshal's Headquarters, no second fool would cross the Qilian Mountains to fight a war.

Yang Jiamo believed the greater likelihood was that Hong Chengchou had guessed wrong. The art of war says: when one is fully prepared, the mind grows slack; what is commonplace raises no suspicion; the hidden lies within the open, not opposite the open.

The army that crossed the Qilian Mountains was still a probing attack; Liu Chengzong's true main force was still on the other side of the Qilian Mountains, and it was very likely that after the Gansu border troops were thrown into disarray by Zhang Tianlin and withdrew their defense from the Qilian Mountains, they would cross the mountains in force.

That way, Zhang Tianlin's mention of Liangzhou as a feint to the east while striking west made sense.

Having roughly thought through a line of reasoning for this matter, Yang Jiamo's mood improved considerably. He was about to set about solving the first problem: the problem of having no troops at hand.

He sent his household retainers to invite a pair of brothers in Zhangye city; these two brothers were named Zhao Zongli and Zhao Zongzhu.

The Zhao brothers were highly respected gentry in Zhangye. The elder brother, Zhao Zongli, was seventy-two this year and had served as Mobile Corps Commander of Floodwater Camp; the younger brother, Zhao Zongzhu, was seventy-one this year and had been Commander of Ganzhou Guard during the Wanli reign.

When the two old Gansu men entered the Regional Commander's yamen, Yang Jiamo, in his fifties, still had to bow and call them uncle.

After the three old men conferred in the Regional Commander's yamen, news of the front-line defeat spread through the various Ganzhou guards. By the time the returning remnant and defeated troops entered the city, Yang Jiamo had sent men searching the gobi and desert for three days, yet they still could not find the battlefield; not a single corpse of the fallen soldiers was brought back.

They said the windblown sand and gravel had buried everything, and no one could find the bloodstains beneath the yellow sand.

Yang Jiamo knew well the situation of Gansu's many powerful clan-based military landlords — after all, the Yang family was one of them — and even he had no way to mobilize other people's household generals.

But the people's anger and shame, those could be artificially mobilized.

In the days that followed, Ganzhou was filled with the sound of weeping that shook the heavens and the whole city was seething with fury. Over six hundred households all wore white mourning clothes; paper money covered the ground everywhere inside and outside the city. People placed the clothes the fallen soldiers had worn and the tools they had used into coffins — or if there were no coffins, rolled them in straw mats — and laid them out row after row outside Zhangye city.

The people of Ganzhou had not experienced warfare for many years; they were content with their livelihoods in the gobi oasis. Yet it seemed that in an instant, every man living in that desert oasis was ignited with rage by the coffins and straw mats at the city gate. Here once more was Zhangye city, the city that "spread the state's arm," ablaze with the flames of war.

The old, the weak, the women, and the children at the city gate cried out for revenge.

At the invitation of Regional Commander Yang Jiamo, the gentry of Ganzhou gathered in the City God Temple. He told them that the Gansu Regional Command's main battalion had been transferred to the Zhuanglang River battlefield, leaving him with no troops at his disposal. Removing his black gauze official cap, he bowed to them again and again.

The Ganzhou gentry sat in their armchairs, faces livid, and accepted the Regional Commander's obeisance with perfect composure — because they were about to commit troops. Even in ancient times, when a great general went to war, the emperor would bow to him like this.

This was precisely why Yang Jiamo had deliberately prevented his soldiers from recovering the bodies of their fallen comrades. The personal dependency of the lower ranks on the upper ranks meant he could not directly ask the Ganzhou gentry to send troops. One more man at war meant one less man to till the fields — who among them had no selfish concerns?

But once the lower ranks saw avenging their comrades as a righteous cause and a shared expectation, the upper ranks could ride the current, reaping both loyalty and prestige — and could no longer refuse.

The seventy-two-year-old veteran general Zhao Zongli rose and wrote a Proclamation to Defend Ganzhou. The notice called upon officials and commoners to enlist with their own provisions, armor, and weapons; upon licentiates to present strategies at the government offices; upon artisans to rush the production of military equipment and medicine; and upon wealthy households and gentry to eagerly donate grain and funds, encouraging their household troops to join the army.

After that, one by one, the Ganzhou gentry rose and saluted the City God, Ji Xin.

The one-armed Commandant Ge Yong; Zhao Zongli's son, Commandant Zhao Cai; the pockmarked Assistant Commander Gao Guoen, convalescing in office; the soon-to-be-appointed Deputy Regional Commander of Lintao, Ouyang Gun; and Commandant Wang Jiaguan, who had never in his life received a substantive post.

Also present were the two sons of Deputy Regional Commander Luo Yigui, who had cut his own throat at Xiping Fort during the Battle of Guangning: Assistant Commissioner-in-Chief Luo Junjie and Commandant Luo Junshi, along with others. A long line of Ganzhou generals signed and sealed the Proclamation to Defend, swearing before the City God to donate money and grain and to dispatch troops for the campaign.

Within a single day, Zhang Zhiheng, Bao Xianshu, Zhang Shengyi, Jiang Mingli, Kang Guoxin, and other tribute students and licentiates of Ganzhou jointly knocked at the gates of the Regional Command to present their strategies for suppressing the bandits.

Numerous gentry in brocade caps and sable furs donated money and grain to the court, one after another dispatching their personal guards and household troops to enlist, which in turn spurred even more Ganzhou officials and commoners to join the army with their own provisions, armor, and weapons.

Regional Commander Yang Jiamo ordered mounted scouts to probe toward Liangzhou for enemy movements. In just two days, Ganzhou registered a full five thousand and more soldiers. The armories of the five Ganzhou Guards also delivered the previous year's manufacturing quota to the weapons depot: three thousand two hundred sets of helmets, armor, blades, bows, arrows, shields, spears, and firearms.

This was practically every military household member and household soldier that the five Ganzhou Guards and the city's officers could muster without disrupting the spring plowing.

Just then, an unexpected piece of military intelligence was delivered to Yang Jiamo's desk. A few Mongol soldiers of the Chijin tribe, who grazed their herds beyond Jiayu Pass, had fled back inside the pass. They said the Great Khan of the Mongols had returned.

The chieftain of the Chijin tribe was escorted directly to Zhangye by troops dispatched by Suzhou Mobile Corps Commander Zhao Zhirui to meet with Yang Jiamo.

The Chijin chieftain swore it was all absolutely true. When Ligdan Khan had marched south into Qinghai, they had taken in some nobles unwilling to follow the Khan south — people who knew the Chahar tribe very well.

They said everyone had heard that Ligdan Khan was already dead.

But a Mongol elite cavalry force of over seven hundred riders had appeared at Yumen, beyond Jiayu Pass. Their military bearing was immaculate, their armor and weapons gleaming. Bearing the white standard of the Chahar Khan's court high, they emerged from the endless yellow sands, radiant as a divine vision.

Their leader was Ligdan Khan's younger brother, the vanguard commander, Setao Taiji. In the name of the Great Khan of All Mongols, he requisitioned two hundred riders and three hundred sheep from the local Chijin tribe, leaving behind twelve iron pots as a reward from the Great Khan.

Afterward, the Taiji led them north of Jiayu Pass, advancing toward the Heihe River, until they vanished at the edge of the great desert.

Yang Jiamo stared at the Chijin chieftain, his mind so full of doubts he did not even know how to begin.

First, he was absolutely certain that Ligdan Khan was dead. There was no Great Khan of All Mongols now.

Second, this Chijin tribe was the remnant of Talini, son of the late Yuan chancellor Kushu. They had become surrendered barbarians of the Great Ming as early as the second year of the Yongle reign. Back then they were called the Chijin Guard, one of the Eight Garrisons West of the Passes. Later, as Ming forces withdrew beyond the pass, the Chijin Guard was relocated inland to Sunan, where they intermarried with Han and Tibetans. Now barely a thousand or two thousand of them remained, and even local commanders could not tell whether to classify them as Tibetans or barbarians.

Any random battalion commander could conscript their soldiers, but even if the Mongol Great Khan came back to life, he could not conscript their soldiers!

Damn it all, Yang Jiamo thought to himself, those Tatars Liu Chengzong threw into the fight at the Zhuanglang River were far more purely Mongol in character than the Chijin tribe.

The moment this thought crossed his mind, Yang Jiamo's heart lurched. Oh no.

His eyes widening, he asked the Chijin chieftain, "Did they tell you who this Great Khan of All Mongols is?"

The Chijin chieftain looked utterly baffled by the question. The Great Khan of All Mongols was the Great Khan of All Mongols — the title did not belong to any one person.

Yang Jiamo had never expected an answer from him. He merely leaned back in his armchair and clenched his jaw. He thought to himself: the dead do not return to life. This Great Khan of All Mongols was, he feared, the Grand Marshal of the Qinghai Marshal's Office — Liu Chengzong.

At that very moment, warhorses' iron hooves pounded through the main street of Zhangye. The bell in the drum tower at the city's center suddenly tolled, its echoes mingling with the neighing of warhorses. A household soldier who should have been on duty atop the city walls sprinted down the corridor and crashed to his knees in the main hall of the official residence, forgetting even to remove his helmet.

He turned and pointed west. "Commander, the beacon tower to the west isn't burning the 'all-clear' fire. Something has happened. The capital must be alerted."

Yang Jiamo shut his eyes tightly and sighed. "How many beacons, how many signal cannons?"

Frontier beacon regulations stipulated that signal cannons accompanied the smoke signals. If more than two beacon towers were lit simultaneously, the capital had to be reported to.

Before the household soldier could answer, it was already a question that needed no reply.

Because the Great General Cannons atop the walls of Zhangye had roared. Boom — boom — boom — boom — boom. Five blasts in succession, each one slamming heavily into Yang Jiamo's chest.

Outside, Zhangye was already in chaos from the signal cannons. Hoofbeats, screams — the din shook the heavens.

And he knew that soon, Wuwei would descend into chaos as well. This turmoil would follow the beacon smoke and the thunder of the signal cannons, sweeping across half the realm at a speed of seven thousand li by day and night, straight to the capital.

The cannon fire made Yang Jiamo feel the world spin around him. In a daze, he seemed to return to the days of his youth, patrolling the frontier with his father.

Back then, he had memorized the beacon protocols so thoroughly they were second nature. Even now, past fifty, he still remembered them clearly: if one or two hundred enemies were sighted, one beacon and one cannon were fired; over a thousand, three beacons and three cannons; over five thousand, four beacons and four cannons; over ten thousand, five beacons and five cannons.

His father had told him that five beacon towers lit at once and five signal cannons fired at once did not necessarily mean ten thousand enemy troops. It simply meant that the watchtower was built with five beacon stacks, and the tower soldiers' Frankish cannons could only fire five times in succession.

In his memories, his father's face in his prime had already blurred. But strangely, he still clearly remembered the day of his own wedding, when his father had drunk too much wine and his stern face bore a rare look of pride and certainty. He had said: we struck the Hu in the north, hung the Japanese from the masts in the east, exterminated the Bobe in the west, and pacified the Bozhou in the south. The martial might of the Great Ming, in this generation, had reached its zenith.

He had said that from now on, beyond Jiayu Pass, there would be no Mongols, Tibetans, Tatars, or barbarians capable of making the tower soldiers light five beacon stacks at once. His sons and grandsons would know no worries.

Yang Jiamo's arm, resting on the armchair, trembled slightly. He suddenly lifted it. His father had not lied. Beyond Jiayu Pass, there truly were no Mongols, Tibetans, Tatars, or barbarians left who could make the tower soldiers burn five beacon stacks.

But his father, who had lived in the Wanli era, could never have known that every generation has its own war to fight. This time, their opponent was themselves.

"Liu Chengzong…" Yang Jiamo placed his arm gently on the tea table. "Liu Chengzong is coming through the pass."